It will be an exciting weekend for DePauw's women's basketball team as they host Kenyon College at Neal Fieldhouse.
In a pre-game ceremony, a banner will be lifted to commemorate the national championship team of last season. In addition to the banner raising, the senior class will be honored on their final regular season home game played at Neal Fieldhouse.
Before the team could look forward to the events of the weekend, however, they had to focus on a road contest at Wittenberg College on Wednesday night.
This matchup had all the makings of a trap game for the DePauw Tigers. With the many festivities scheduled to take place on Saturday, DePauw head coach Kris Huffman was concerned about her team's focus on the tilt with the Wittenberg Tigers.
"Wittenberg is always a tough team," said Huffman. "They're a team that almost knocked us off last year at their place, so we knew that this was going to be a challenging game."
Despite all this, the Wittenberg Tigers proved to be no match for the undefeated DePauw squad.
The two teams played fairly evenly for the first few minutes of the game, but DePauw's skill was able to come through when they went on a 22-2 run that blew things wide open. The run helped DePauw take a 38-20 lead into halftime.
DePauw held on to their momentum in the second half, scoring the first nine points of the second half and were off and running to a 73-48 win.
The victory pushed the improbable winning streak to 57 games and improved DePauw's overall season record to 23-0.
With Wittenberg out of the way, the DePauw Tigers can now turn the entirety of their efforts and focus to the emotion-filled matchup with Kenyon on Saturday.
The festivities are scheduled to begin immediately following the men's game against Kenyon.
"The banner ceremony shouldn't take more than five minutes or so," said DePauw Athletic Director, Stevie Baker-Watson. "That way the players can look at it like a normal game."
To add to the excitement and nostalgia, three members of last season's national championship team will be coming back to help raise the banner.
"I'm really excited for the game," said first-year Jane Pera. "I'm heading to the gym early so I don't miss any of the ceremony. It'll be really great to see the team honored for their amazing season last year."
In addition to the banner raising, Saturday's game will be the last time this season's class of seniors takes the floor at Neal Fieldhouse for a regular season game. Seniors Ann Sarkisian, Alex Gasaway, Ali Ross, Alison Stephens and Erin McGinnis will be honored as well in a pre-game ceremony.
Saturday will give the DePauw community the chance to honor a team that has done some remarkable things. Thanks to Indianapolis' NBC affiliate, basketball fans across Indiana know about DePauw's success.
The station came out to Neal Fieldhouse to take some footage of DePauw's win over Hiram College last Saturday as well as sit down interviews with senior Alex Gasaway and head coach Kris Huffman.
"Any time DePauw can get into the spotlight, I think it helps the university," said Huffman. "I think it helps all of the athletic programs and we certainly don't mind having our name out there a little bit."
The banner and senior ceremonies are scheduled to begin immediately following the men's game against Kenyon. Tipoff for the women is at 3 p.m. at Neal Fieldhouse.